Fake Memories: Difference between revisions

'''Shadow:''' No doubt.

'''Rouge:''' Even your memories might not be real, you know?

 

{{quote|'''Official''': Doctor, am I right in thinking you can create experiences, implant them into a subject, who will then believe that they really happened?

 

Sometimes when [[Laser-Guided Amnesia]] won't cut it, the villains, heroes, or [[The Men in Black]] need to radically alter a subject's very ''memories'' to ensure their [[Evil Plan]], [[Epiphany Therapy]] or [[Masquerade|cover-up]] (respectively) works flawlessly.

 

 

Of course, [[Pygmalion Snapback|this never works as planned.]] Like an itch they can't scratch, the character with tampered memories will notice things aren't as they should be and scratch at the false memories like a scab, questioning their [[Conveniently Unverifiable Cover Story|"Past"]] and [[Broken Masquerade|searching for the truth.]] Or go crazy trying. Occasionally, a hero will leave a [[Note to Self:]] or instructions for friends to help. The irony being that the false memories tend to lead the character right back to the people who erased them with enough of an advantage to take them out.

 

 

Quite common in video games, probably because [[Easy Amnesia|amnesiac heroes]] are extremely convenient for the format. Occasionally used as part of a more radical attempt at making someone into an [[Unperson]].

 

Related tropes include [[Manchurian Agent]], [[Memory Gambit]], [[Amnesiac Dissonance]], and [[Tomato in the Mirror]]. Compare [[Exposition Beam]].

 

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* ''Everybody's'' memories in ''[[The Big O]]''. [[Mind Screw|Maybe]].

* ''[[Serial Experiments Lain]]''. a [[Mind Screw]] series if there ever was one, is largely built around exploring this trope: Lain Iwakura, with the ability to alter humanity's collective memory, is forced to deal with the questions of what reality ''is''. Eventually she {{spoiler|writes herself out of existence by removing all memories of herself from the world.}}

* Used in the first ''[[Ghost in the Shell]]'' movie. The antagonists gets a random garbage man to do some jobs for him by promising to help him getting back his wife and daughter. Which both never existed. Another mook seems to have been completely mind whiped, leaving only the basics of his cover identity with no knowledge about his actual boss. In both cases, it works flawlessly.

** Not only that, but ''everyone'' in the school is given exactly the same fake memories to make the effect even stronger. They all believe that Lelouch is nothing more and nothing less than a fellow student, and that {{spoiler|Rolo is his brother, whereas Nunally is merely a pretty and kind Britannian princess that later becomes the Viceroy of Area 11.}} And ''then'', {{spoiler|Shirley has her true memories back via [[Anti-Magic|Jeremiah]], but at sme point she happens to mention Nunnally ''while speaking to [[Yandere|Rolo]]''...}}

** Similarly, {{spoiler|[[Action Girl]] Anya Earlstreim has her memories rewritten to cover up how she's the [[Soul Jar]] of Lelouch's mother, Empress Marianne. It ''really'' fucks up with her self-worth, as the poor girl never knows which memories are hers or not.}}

** At some point she's also ''at the receiving end'' of it, and it's '''much''' uglier. {{spoiler|She's captured [[Heroic BSOD|while at a very low emotional point]], and then Wiseman uses this to make her believe her parents hated her. The [[Mind Rape]] leaves her liable to his manipulations and, after being forcibly infused with Dark Energy, she becomes [[Dark Magical Girl|Black Lady]].}}

* Happens a couple of times in ''[[Darker than Black]]'', where [[Imported Alien Phlebotinum]] is responsible for this and [[Laser-Guided Amnesia]].

* In ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! GX]]'', Yusuke Fujiwara gives everyone fake memories of him being their childhood friend so he can infiltrate the school grounds. Judai Yuki was unaffected and eventually confronts the guy.

* In ''[[Tiger and Bunny]]'' {{spoiler|Albert Maverick, the CEO of [[Show Within a Show|HeroTV,]] has the [[Differently-Powered Individual|NEXT]] ability to implant and alter memories. He uses his powers twice on Barnaby in order to frame a well-known NEXT criminal for the murder of the latter's parents (though it's implied that his manipulation of Barnaby's memories is ''far more extensive'' than what was shown on-screen), and also on a number of other characters to make them [[Unperson|forget Kotetsu's very existence.]]}}

* In ''[[Another]]'', Class 3-3 is cursed by the presence of {{spoiler|an extra student who's already dead.}} While they're aware of the presence in general, working out the specifics is impossible because everyone, {{spoiler|including the "Extra"}}, has their memories altered as if things were like that the entire time. Even paperwork is changed to reflect this. Only after graduation can anything be fully pieced together because everything reverts back to normal.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* Wolverine of the [[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]] is notorious for this; for a while there, anything he wasn't amnesiac about was probably a Fake Memory. The confusion has mostly been cleared up by now, however.

* Cyclops had a number of these for years, regarding his family and the nature of the accident that damaged his brain and powers, partly due to the real head trauma and partly due to Mister Sinister's tinkering.

 

 

== [[Film]] ==

** Kira is a very powerful Pusher do and once causes one of the guys guarding her to kill his partner by convincing him his partner killed his little brother in a rather gruesome way. The kicker? He never had a brother.

* In ''[[Total Recall]]'', the main character has visions of a life on Mars that contradicts his memories of a quiet blue-collar life on Earth. He starts to regain his earlier memories with the help of a [[Note to Self:]], but it turns out ''those'' were fake memories, too, all part of an [[Gambit Roulette|elaborate]] [[Manchurian Agent]] plot. But then, you never really know whether it was [[All Just a Dream]] anyway.

** And in the book it was based on, people could ''buy'' as entertainment, fake memories of being an action hero working for the government. Problems arose when those memories turned out to be real for the protagonist... Or were they?

* ''[[Moon]]''. {{spoiler|A few weeks from the end of his solitary three-year contract on the Moon, the protagonist discovers he is a clone of the real Sam Bell. It turns out that the wife he's looking forward to seeing died years ago, his baby daughter is actually fifteen years old, and his body is beginning to break down whereupon he'll be incinerated and replaced with another Sam Bell with the same implanted memories, who'll believe he's just starting his three year contract.}}

* ''[[Memento]].'' Turns out that Leonard, unable to make new memories since being attacked, {{spoiler|has not only been intentionally lying to himself in order to give himself fake clues to get revenge on people he's taken a dislike to in the last five minutes... but he's also purposefully remodelled some of the aspects of his life from before his laser guided amnesia struck as a way of dealing with the guilt of killing his wife}}.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* In ''[[The Golden Oecumene|The Golden Age]]'' by [[John C. Wright]] the hero Pheathon is attacked by exosolar assassin Scaramouche, except that the attack, and the events leading up to it, never took place. {{spoiler|They were implanted by the villain in order to discredit the hero, and lure him into opening a Pandora's box containing yet another set of false memories, which he removed to avoid lawsuit.}}

** Her "father" was punished for his sins by the Harpers by having all memory of him purged from the realms. Pretty much nobody remembers who he was or the songs he created. It was designed to be the perfect punishment as he was trying to ensure his works would never be forgotten.

** Later in the series, she actually ''meets the woman whose memories they were originally.''

* As a side effect of making the subject [[Ret-Gone]], the [[Sword of Truth|Chainfire]] spell falsifies memories of events that included the subject. Naturally, the characters hanging around with Richard, who was immune to the spell's effects, think ''his'' memories are the fake ones.

* The "screen memories" experienced by people after they encounter aliens in ''[[More Information Than You Require]]''.

* [[Thursday Next]] spends most of the novel ''First Among Sequels'' convinced that she has three children: Friday, Tuesday and Jenny. Jenny is eventually revealed to be a fabrication, placed in Thursday's mind by mnemonomorph Aornis Hades to torment her; Thursday's family have been playing along, laying a place at the dinner table for Jenny and telling Thursday she just left the room and so on, to try and save Thursday from the trauma. The full-on [[Nightmare Fuel]] comes at the end of the scene, where Thursday has already forgotten the conversation and asks where Jenny is, making one wonder just how many times her family have had to go through this.

* In ''The Lost Hero'', the first book in ''[[The Heroes of Olympus]]'' series, ''everybody'' at the Wilderness School is given fake memories of [[The Hero|Jason]] having been there for the whole school year. He even gets a fake best friend and girlfriend.

* In ''[[Septimus Heap]]'', this si done to the Hunter so as to prevent him from chasing Jenna again. Specifically, they put a clown memory into him.

 

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* An early ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' episode, the whole team was made to believe Daniel was dead. Naturally, the truth was uncovered through hypnosis.

** Another example - "The Fifth Man" in which an alien with this as a power becomes the fifth member of the team, there all along. Unusually, he's a friendly alien seeking to ally with them, and the pheromone that lets his species do this is extracted and used in a later episode to allow Daniel to infiltrate a Goa'uld summit.

** And one more: Mitchell is implanted with fake memories to frame him for a crime. Turns out that {{spoiler|the real murderer erased his own memories of the crime, then grieves over the victim's death and helps SG-1 track down the real killer.}}

* In the two-part ''[[Doctor Who]]'' story "Human Nature"/"Family of Blood", this is one of the functions of the Chameleon Arch, which turns the Doctor into a human - memories and all.

** Use of the Chameleon Arch is also noted in the episode {{spoiler|"Utopia", with the Master having Arched himself to escape the Time War.}}

* The ''[[Torchwood]]'' episode "Adam" is another instance of false memories being used to infiltrate the team. It's particularly dark when Adam make Ianto think he murdered and raped several women; he cracks underneath the guilt, horrified he would do anything so terrible. {{spoiler|Thankfully, in the end, the team wipes all their memories of the day.}}

* ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' has a particularly effective example, where Chief O'Brien is punished (by aliens) for a crime he didn't commit, and the punishment is to simulate 20 years of prison in his mind while only a few hours pass in real life. The charges are eventually dropped, but only after the 20 virtual years have been played out in his mind. In this case, O'Brien is fully mentally aware (after a few hours of rehabilitation) that his memories of prison are fake, but he still feels guilty about certain things he did in his mind. The guilt has a profound effect on his emotional state, {{spoiler|nearly driving him to suicide}}.

** Subverted in a different episode where O'Brien realizes his memories don't correlate with reality and something real nasty is going on. Turns out that {{spoiler|O'Brien himself is not real, he's a hidden assassin with fake memories, they were just strong enough for him to uncover the whole deal before dying}}.

* In the "Workforce" episode of ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]],'' the crew is brainwashed to believe that they belong on the planet they are being forced to work on.

** In "Course: Oblivion" the ''entire crew'' discovers their memories are fake. {{spoiler|They're actually not the ''Voyager'' crew at all, but Silver Blood duplicates who ''think'' they're the originals.}}

* In mid '90s TV series ''[[Nowhere Man]]'' a man comes out of the bathroom to rejoin his birthday party. No one knows who he is. It's a conspiracy. He travels around much like the Fugitive, even visiting his mother at one point. She doesn't know who he is. All the while he is being pursued by some secretive organisation who clearly must have manipulated everyone. In the end we learn he isn't who he thought he was. Everything up until he left the bathroom were implanted memories.

* As of the end of ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' Volume 4 {{spoiler|Sylar has been implanted with the suggestion that he is Nathan Petrelli, if not with the man's actual memories. His ability to read the history of any object he touches, and his ability to shapeshift will presumably fill in the blanks}}.

* This is done to John in an early episode of ''[[Farscape]]''. A group of Delvians make him think he is married and his wife is with him on the planet, complete with fake memories of her being involved in all of his adventures. The point is to distract him and fracture his mind so they can get to Zhaan. Interestingly, he doesn't discover the truth on his own and is only released from the delusions when one of the bad guys has a change of heart.

* In one episode of ''[[Legend of the Seeker]]'', this was used by a murderer to make someone else believe they had committed the crime. Especially tricky because not only would the person with the fake memories admit to the crime under Confession, but once the heroes had figured out that fake memories were involved, the killer ''planted the memories of planting the previous false memories'' in yet another innocent person.

* ''[[Starsky and Hutch (TV series)|Starsky and Hutch]]'': The evil conspiracy in "The Set-Up" manufactures untraceable assassins by [[Brainwashed and Crazy|brainwashing]] random people and giving them memories that make them want to kill the target.

* Season 2 of ''[[Haven]]'' appears to indicate that {{spoiler|Audrey's memories are fake and that she's really Lucy, when the real Audrey Parker shows up}}.

 

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

** There is also a less powerful spell call [http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/modifyMemory.htm modify memory] that still has power perversion possibilities.

* The Fetch from ''[[Changeling: The Lost]]'' are magical doppelgangers created by the True Fae when they abduct a human. The Fetch live out the lives of the people they've replaced, oblivious to the fact that their whole life is a shame...until the taken human, now a Changeling, escapes from Faerie. Most Fetch aren't aware anything's amiss until this happens, and most take the news they are fakes with memories stolen from a small piece of a person's soul poorly. Of course, sometimes the Fetch's memories are imperfect to begin with...

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* The main issue driving James Sunderland through ''[[Silent Hill 2]]'' is that he has immersed himself in a fantasy quest based completely around a fabricated recollection of his wife's death, which has replaced the truth in his mind.

* This is the premise behind ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'s'' [[Tomato in the Mirror]]: {{spoiler|the [[Player Character]] is former Sith Lord Darth Revan, reprogrammed to act as a Jedi agent and pursue the [[Artifact of Doom|Star Forge]].}}

** Also, in the second game, "[[Kingdom Hearts II]]", {{spoiler|Roxas}} has a false past of happy friends and a pretty hometown. {{spoiler|He's really a Nobody, who has to effectively die to wake the player character Sora from a Naminé-induced coma.}}

* ''[[Klonoa]]: Door to Phantomile'' has a [[Tomato in the Mirror]] moment at the end to give it a last-second [[Bittersweet Ending]].

* In ''[[Vagrant Story]]'', main character Ashley's generic tragic [[Backstory]] is picked apart through the game to explain his [[Cursed with Awesome|incredible fighting prowess]], but neither one seems to quite add up. Ultimately he chooses to leave his past behind him, and [[The Un-Reveal|we never find out which one is true]].

* As in the page quote, there's some questions throughout the ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' series about whether the Shadow you play as is in fact the "real Shadow". In ''Sonic Adventure 2'' these questions come about when Rouge finds information on the original Project Shadow, the Biolizard. The question is never actually answered, but the caption before fighting Biolizard refers to it as "the prototype of the ultimate life", meaning that there is a final product: Shadow the Hedgehog. In ''Sonic Adventure 2 Battle'', this is modified to suggest that the ultimate lifeform is either Shadow or Sonic the Hedgehog, although only Shadow has reason to suspect this. In ''Sonic Heroes'', it comes up again, as several Shadow Androids are discovered, leading Rouge to believe that Shadow is a robot himself. It's finally settled in (what else?) ''[[Shadow the Hedgehog]]'', but only if you take long enough at the final boss to hear Eggman tell you that you're the real Shadow. The various endings throughout the game vary between Shadow accepting himself as real, or as an android.

** {{spoiler|To sum up: Biolizard is created as an ultimate life form. Shadow is then created as the ultimate life form as well, using extra alien DNA. So, Shadow is a more advanced prototype then Biolizard. Then, Shadow nearly died, got recovered by Eggman with Amnesia. He used Shadow's template to create a bunch of robots. So, Shadow's fake memories are real memories.}}

** At least one of his memories is for sure fake: in Sonic Adventure 2's Last Story, {{spoiler|his [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]] was set off by Gerald changing his memory of the promise he made to [[Dead Little Sister|Maria]].}}

* The main character's life before coming to Rapture in ''[[BioShock (series)]]''.

* ''[[Shin Megami Tensei II]]'' has {{spoiler|Hiroko, who was implanted with fake memories of being a [[Knight Templar|Temple Knight]] in order to conceal the fact that she was forcefully used in an experiment as the surrogate mother of [[The Messiah]]}}.

** ''[[Digital Devil Saga]]'' 2 has a horrific form of these, {{spoiler|coupled with [[Demonic Possession]]. Turns out there's this virus that can transform you into a demon. Certain cases are worse than others, some reaching the degree where your mind is essentially overwritten and then it's just the demon driving your body. The worst part? The four or five cases where the victim's mind is permanently obliterated? All of them turned into ''angels''.}}

{{quote|'''Rahm Kota hallucination''': You're Vader's puppet, just a body filled with the memories of a dead man.}}

* As a general rule, any event referenced in ''[[Gemini Rue]]'' that isn't explicitly shown onscreen has at least a chance of having been artificially implanted. {{spoiler|In the end, Kane is the only surviving main character who knows anything of his real backstory.}}

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

* Numerous [[Gender Bender]] stories involving Magic Transformations have the world reality-shift around the main character, so that everyone sees things as if they had progressed naturally from the beginning in the new reality.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* The original Ultimen of ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'' had implanted memories, covering for the fact that they're all less than a year old. In this case, the memories were supplemented by minimizing contact with their "families."

* On ''[[X-Men: Evolution]]'' [[Magnificent Bastard|Magneto]] has Mastermind alter [[Scarlet Witch]]'s memories so that she no longer wants revenge on him.

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

* Incorrect memories can be formed under a number of circumstances, especially periods of high stress or adrenaline. There is a video of a police officer firing a full magazine, reloading, and firing again, in front of a dashboard camera the officer set himself, and then thinking he only fired his gun twice.

* Anton-Babinski syndrome, or Anton's Blindness, is a condition in which an individual is blind to a large degree, but makes up an entirely false imagination, experience, and memory of vision. It's very rare, but interesting enough to be seen in ''[[House (TV series)|House]] MD''.

** The reverse can also happen. A person can see completely, but is fully convinced they are blind. (It's tested by having people who are actually blind/them go through a room. They either have close to 0% success, or close to 100% success at key tasks, while people who are actually blind have about 50% success.)

* While it's not clear exactly how much of the events fall under this trope, a number of the 1980-1995 accusations of Satanic ritualistic abuse of children in the United States and elsewhere involved testimony that was simply impossible, which the individual did not remember until after being questioned.

*** There's also a connection to the process of refutation. When we receive information, we accept it as true, for lack of a better word, for a split second. Only after accepting that information can we examine and compare that to other information we know in order to refute that information, because, of course, it takes longer to think about and evaluate such a suggestion than to hear it and accept it. If we don't have sufficient information to refute this new suggestion, or if the process of refutation is simply disrupted or prevented from occurring properly (such as in the hypnosis examples) then we are inclined to accept that information as true. Because it happens so fast, we don't realise there's anything false about the memory. Someone mentions the STOP sign, we see a stop sign in our minds when we accept the information, and, having no information to contradict this, we assume that we are experiencing a memory of seeing the sign, and agree to having seen it.

** Heck, just lack of information can cause you to create multiple, contradictory memories of the same event. Good luck finding out which one is true without outside information.

* The ease with which false memories can be implanted actually borders on [[Nightmare Fuel]]. There are quite a few cases of bad lineup procedure causing witnesses to 'rewrite' their memories, resulting such absurd things as people getting wrongly convicted merely because they happened to have a ''sign'' above their head, or were the right answer to "Which of these is not like the others?" Perhaps the worst part is that the witnesses may even be flat-out ''certain'' that their choice from the line-up is the right person, despite whatever later evidence proves.

* It's recently been theorized (and partially proven) that memory is as malleable as ''sand''. Instead of having a perfect copy of a memory, it's possible to recall a memory, specifically have someone change a part of that memory through forceful suggestion, and then believe that that's actually what happened. While scary, it has practical applications: soldiers suffering from PTSD can be asked to relive the memory, then use specific drugs (in this case, beta blockers) to rewrite the memory and remove the shellshock. It's not an instant fix, however, requiring multiple treatments.

* Experiments have been done on this, though the people conducting them have to be very careful to give the subjects proper therapy after implanting false memories. One example is of a woman who caused a man to believe he had been lost in a mall at the age of five and told her all of the details with startling detail and sureness for a fake memory. He had a difficult time believing it was fake, to say the least.

* Try it sometime. Talking to a friend or family member, start telling them about a news report that never happened. Supply just a few details and they'll start remembering it. You don't need any special expertise to live this trope.

*** What's interesting is that savant-abilities can be induced with magnetic pulses aimed at certain areas of the brain. These pulses work by ''impairing'' those portions and forcing others to take over-and they appear to bring other abilities with them.

* When the film ''[[Back to The Future]]'' was first released on VHS, a [[To Be Continued]] caption was added at the end to set up the coming sequel. Many people "remember" seeing this caption when the movie was originally in theaters and the filmmakers have had a hard time convincing them that this would be impossible. At the time, most of the films directed by [[Robert Zemeckis]] had flopped and so his only hope for ''Back to the Future'' was that it would make its money back. There were certainly no sequels planned at that stage.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Memory Tropes]]

[[Category:Mind Manipulation Tropes]]